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Файл:Michael, Brother of Jerry
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MICHAEL, BROTHER OF JERRY
a month if he works for the ship all his time. But if he works for
me all the time, I’ll let him sign on for two an’ a half a month”.
“Eighteen days in the longboat”, the Ancient Mariner
shrilled, to Daughtry’s startlement. “Eighteen days in the longboat, eighteen days of scorching hell”.
“My word”, quoth Daughtry, “the old gentleman’d give one
the jumps. There’ll sure have to be plenty of beer”.
“Sea stewards put on some style, I must say”, commented
the wheat-farmer, oblivious to the Ancient Mariner, who still
declaimed of the heat of the longboat.
“Suppose we don’t see our way to signing on a steward who
travels in such style?” the Jew asked, mopping the inside of his
collar-band with a coloured silk handkerchief.
“Then you’ll never know what a good steward you’ve
missed, sir”, Daughtry responded airily.
“I guess there’s plenty more stewards on Sydney beach”,
the captain said briskly. “And I guess I haven’t forgotten old
days, when I hired them like so much dirt, yes, by Jinks, so
much dirt, there were so many of them”.
“Thank you, Mr. Steward, for looking us up”, the Jew took
up the idea with insulting oiliness. “We very much regret our
inability to meet your wishes in the matter –”
“And I saw it go under the sand, a fathom under the sand,
on cross-bearings unnamable, where the mangroves fade
away, and the coconuts grow, and the rise of land lifts from
the beach to the Lion’s Head”.
“Hold your horses”, the wheat-farmer said, with a fl are of
irritation, directed, not at the Ancient Mariner, but at the captain and the Jew. “Who’s putting up for this expedition? Don’t
I get no say so? Ain’t my opinion ever to be asked? I like this
steward. Strikes me he’s the real goods. I notice he’s as polite as
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JACK LONDON
all get-out, and I can see he can take an order without arguing.
And he ain’t no fool by a long shot”.
“That’s the very point, Grimshaw”, the Jew answered soothingly. “Considering the unusualness of our... of the expedition,
we’d be better served by a steward who is more of a fool. Another point, which I’d esteem a real favour from you, is not to
forget that you haven’t put a red copper more into this trip
than I have –”
“And where’d either of you be, if it wasn’t for me with
my knowledge of the sea?” the captain demanded aggrievedly. “To say nothing of the mortgage on my house and on
the nicest little best paying fl at building in San Francisco since
the earthquake”.
“But who’s still putting up? – all of you, I ask you”.
The wheat-farmer leaned forward, resting the heels of his
hands on his knees so that the fi ngers hung down his long
shins, in Daughtry’s appraisal, half-way to his feet. “You, Captain Doane, can’t raise another penny on your properties. My
land still grows the wheat that brings the ready. You, Simon
Nishikanta, won’t put up another penny – yet your loan-shark
offi ces are doing business at the same old stands at God knows
what per cent. to drunken sailors. And you hang the expedition up here in this hole-in-the-wall waiting for my agent to
cable more wheat-money. Well, I guess we’ll just sign on this
steward at sixty a month and all he asks, or I’ll just naturally
quit you cold on the next fast steamer to San Francisco”.
He stood up abruptly, towering to such height that Daughtry looked to see the crown of his head collide with the deck
above.
“I’m sick and tired of you all, yes, I am”, he continued. “Get
busy! Well, let’s get busy. My money’s coming. It’ll be here by
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MICHAEL, BROTHER OF JERRY
to-morrow. Let’s be ready to start by hiring a steward that is
a steward. I don’t care if he brings two families along”.
“I guess you’re right, Grimshaw”, Simon Nishikanta said
appeasingly. “The trip is beginning to get on all our nerves.
Forget it if I fl y off the handle. Of course we’ll take this steward
if you want him. I thought he was too stylish for you”.
He turned to Daughtry.
“Naturally, the least said ashore about us the better”.
“That’s all right, sir. I can keep my mouth shut, though
I might as well tell you there’s some pretty tales about you
drifting around the beach right now”.
“The object of our expedition?” the Jew queried quickly.
Daughtry nodded.
“Is that why you want to come?” was demanded equally
quickly.
Daughtry shook his head.
“As long as you give me my beer each day, sir, I ain’t goin’ to
be interested in your treasure-huntin’. It ain’t no new tale to
me. The South Seas is populous with treasure-hunters –” Almost could Daughtry have sworn that he had seen a fl ash of
anxiety break through the dream-fi lms that bleared the Ancient Mariner’s eyes. “And I must say, sir”, he went on easily,
though saying what he would not have said had it not been
for what he was almost certain he sensed of the ancient’s anxiousness, “that the South Seas is just naturally lousy with buried treasure. There’s Keeling-Cocos, millions ’n’ millions of
it, pounds sterling, I mean, waiting for the lucky one with
the right steer”.
This time Daughtry could have sworn to having sensed
a change toward relief in the Ancient Mariner, whose eyes
were again fi lmy with dreams.
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JACK LONDON
“But I ain’t interested in treasure, sir”, Daughtry concluded. “It’s beer I’m interested in. You can chase your treasure,
an’ I don’t care how long, just as long as I’ve got six quarts to
open each day. But I give you fair warning, sir, before I sign on:
if the beer dries up, I’m goin’ to get interested in what you’re
after. Fair play is my motto”.
“Do you expect us to pay for your beer in addition?” Simon
Nishikanta demanded.
To Daughtry it was too good to be true. Here, with the Jew
healing the breach with the wheat-farmer whose agents still
cabled money, was the time to take advantage.
“Sure, it’s one of our agreements, sir. What time would it
suit you, sir, to-morrow afternoon, for me to sign on at the shipping commissioner’s?”
“Casks and chests of it, casks and chests of it, oodles and
oodles, a fathom under the sand”, chattered the Ancient
Mariner.
“You’re all touched up under the roof”, Daughtry grinned.
“Which ain’t got nothing to do with me as long as you furnish
the beer, pay me due an’ proper what’s comin’ to me the fi rst of
each an’ every month, an’ pay me off fi nal in San Francisco. As
long as you keep up your end, I’ll sail with you to the Pit ’n’
back an’ watch you sweatin’ the casks ’n’ chests out of the sand.
What I want is to sail with you if you want me to sail with you
enough to satisfy me”.
Simon Nishikanta glanced about. Grimshaw and Captain
Doane nodded.
“At three o’clock to-morrow afternoon, at the shipping
commissioner’s”, the Jew agreed. “When will you report for
duty?”
“When will you sail, sir?” Daughtry countered.
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MICHAEL, BROTHER OF JERRY
“Bright and early next morning”.
“Then I’ll be on board and on duty some time to-morrow
night, sir”.
And as he went up the cabin companion, he could hear
the Ancient Mariner maundering: “Eighteen days in the longboat, eighteen days of scorching hell... “
CHAPTER X
Michael left the Makambo as he had come on board, through
a port-hole. Likewise, the affair occurred at night, and it was
Kwaque’s hands that received him. It had been quick work,
and daring, in the dark of early evening. From the boat-deck,
with a bowline under Kwaque’s arms and a turn of the rope
around a pin, Dag Daughtry had lowered his leprous servitor
into the waiting launch.
On his way below, he encountered Captain Duncan, who
saw fi t to warn him:
“No shannigan with Killeny Boy, Steward. He must go
back to Tulagi with us”.
“Yes, sir”, the steward agreed. “An’ I’m keepin’ him tight in
my room to make safe. Want to see him, sir?”
The very frankness of the invitation made the captain suspicious, and the thought fl ashed through his mind that perhaps Killeny Boy was already hidden ashore somewhere by
the dog-stealing steward.
“Yes, indeed I’d like to say how-do-you-do to him”, Captain
Duncan answered.
And his was genuine surprise, on entering the steward’s
room, to behold Michael just rousing from his curled-up
sleep on the fl oor. But when he left, his surprise would have
been shocking could he have seen through the closed door
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MICHAEL, BROTHER OF JERRY
what immediately began to take place. Out through the open
port-hole, in a steady stream, Daughtry was passing the contents of the room. Everything went that belonged to him, including the turtle-shell and the photographs and calendars
on the wall. Michael, with the command of silence laid upon
him, went last. Remained only a sea-chest and two suit-cases,
themselves too large for the port-hole but bare of contents.
When Daughtry sauntered along the main deck a few minutes later and paused for a gossip with the customs offi cer and
a quartermaster at the head of the gang-plank, Captain Duncan little dreamed that his casual glance was resting on his
steward for the last time. He watched him go down the gangplank empty-handed, with no dog at his heels, and stroll
off along the wharf under the electric lights.
Ten minutes after Captain Duncan saw the last of his broad
back, Daughtry, in the launch with his belongings and heading for Jackson Bay, was hunched over Michael and caressing
him, while Kwaque, crooning with joy under his breath that
he was with all that was precious to him in the world, felt once
again in the side-pocket of his fl imsy coat to make sure that his
beloved jews’ harp had not been left behind.
Dag Daughtry was paying for Michael, and paying well.
Among other things, he had not cared to arouse suspicion by
drawing his wages from Burns Philp. The twenty pounds due
him he had abandoned, and this was the very sum, that night
on the beach at Tulagi, he had decided he could realize from
the sale of Michael. He had stolen him to sell. He was paying
for him the sales price that had tempted him.
For, as one has well said: the horse abases the base, ennobles
the noble. Likewise the dog. The theft of a dog to sell for a price
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JACK LONDON
had been the abasement worked by Michael on Dag Daughtry. To pay the price out of sheer heart-love that could recognize no price too great to pay, had been the ennoblement of
Dag Daughtry which Michael had worked. And as the launch
chug-chugged across the quiet harbour under the southern
stars, Dag Daughtry would have risked and tossed his life into
the bargain in a battle to continue to have and to hold the dog
he had originally conceived of as being interchangeable for so
many dozens of beer.
* * * * *
The Mary Turner, towed out by a tug, sailed shortly after
daybreak, and Daughtry, Kwaque, and Michael looked their
last for ever on Sydney Harbour.
“Once again these old eyes have seen this fair haven”,
the Ancient Mariner, beside them gazing, babbled; and
Daughtry could not help but notice the way the wheat-farmer
and the pawnbroker pricked their ears to listen and glanced
each to the other with scant eyes. “It was in ’52, in 1852, on
such a day as this, all drinking and singing along the decks,
we cleared from Sydney in the Wide Awake. A pretty craft, oh
sirs, a most clever and pretty craft. A crew, a brave crew, all
youngsters, all of us, fore and aft, no man was forty, a mad, gay
crew. The captain was an elderly gentleman of twenty-eight,
the third offi cer another of eighteen, the down, untouched of
steel, like so much young velvet on his cheek. He, too, died in
the longboat. And the captain gasped out his last under
the palm trees of the isle unnamable while the brown maidens wept about him and fanned the air to his parching lungs”.
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MICHAEL, BROTHER OF JERRY
Dag Daughtry heard no more, for he turned below to take
up his new routine of duty. But while he made up bunks with
fresh linen and directed Kwaque’s efforts to cleaning longneglected fl oors, he shook his head to himself and muttered,
“He’s a keen ’un. He’s a keen ’un. All ain’t fools that look it”.
The fi ne lines of the Mary Turner were explained by the fact
that she had been built for seal-hunting; and for the same reason on board of her was room and to spare. The forecastle with
bunk-space for twelve, bedded but eight Scandinavian seamen.
The fi ve staterooms of the cabin accommodated the three treasure-hunters, the Ancient Mariner, and the mate – the latter a large-bodied, gentle-souled Russian-Finn, known as
Mr. Jackson through inability of his shipmates to pronounce
the name he had signed on the ship’s articles.
Remained the steerage, just for’ard of the cabin, separated
from it by a stout bulkhead and entered by a companionway
on the main deck. On this deck, between the break of the poop
and the steerage companion, stood the galley. In the steerage
itself, which possessed a far larger living-space than the cabin,
were six capacious bunks, each double the width of the forecastle bunks, and each curtained and with no bunk above it.
“Some fella glory-hole, eh, Kwaque?” Daughtry told his
seventeen-years-old brown-skinned Papuan with the withered ancient face of a centenarian, the legs of a living skeleton,
and the huge-stomached torso of an elderly Japanese wrestler.
“Eh, Kwaque! What you fella think?”
And Kwaque, too awed by the spaciousness to speak, eloquently rolled his eyes in agreement.
“You likee this piecee bunk?” the cook, a little old Chinaman, asked the steward with eager humility, inviting the white
man’s acceptance of his own bunk with a wave of arm.
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JACK LONDON
Daughtry shook his head. He had early learned that it was
wise to get along well with sea-cooks, since sea-cocks were notoriously given to going suddenly lunatic and slicing and hacking up their shipmates with butcher knives and meat cleavers
on the slightest remembered provocation. Besides, there was
an equally good bunk all the way across the width of the steerage from the Chinaman’s. The bunk next on the port side to
the cook’s and abaft of it Daughtry allotted to Kwaque. Thus
he retained for himself and Michael the entire starboard side
with its three bunks. The next one abaft of his own he named
“Killeny Boy’s”, and called on Kwaque and the cook to take
notice. Daughtry had a sense that the cook, whose name had
been quickly volunteered as Ah Moy, was not entirely satisfi ed
with the arrangement; but it affected him no more than a momentary curiosity about a Chinaman who drew the line at
a dog taking a bunk in the same apartment with him.
Half an hour later, returning, from setting the cabin
aright, to the steerage for Kwaque to serve him with a bottle of beer, Daughtry observed that Ah Moy had moved his
entire bunk belongings across the steerage to the third bunk
on the starboard side. This had put him with Daughtry and
Michael and left Kwaque with half the steerage to himself.
Daughtry’s curiosity recrudesced.
“What name along that fella Chink?” he demanded of
Kwaque. “He no like ’m you fella boy stop ’m along same fella
side along him. What for? My word! What name? That fella
Chink make ’m me cross along him too much!”
“Suppose ’m that fella Chink maybe he think ’m me kai-kai
along him”, Kwaque grinned in one of his rare jokes.
“All right”, the steward concluded. “We fi nd out. You move
’m along my bunk, I move ’m along that fella Chink’s bunk”.
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